I’d like to give a big, heartfelt thank you to the Association des bègues du Canada (ABC), the stuttering association in the province of Quebec, Canada, for their generous funding of the translation and first printing of my book. I was so happy when the ABC board of directors told me the great news of their interest in working together, that I immediately drew and emailed the illustration above to them (the turtle is the mascot of the ABC).

With the ABC’s help, together we will be able to spread words of encouragement, solidarity, and humour to Francophones who stutter all over the world! According to France Diplomatie, there are over 220 million French speakers around the world and French is an official language in 29 countries. It is said that 1% of the world’s population stutters, so if we apply that to the Francophone community, that will be a lot of people we can reach!

I’m happy to say that professional translator, fellow stutterer, and my friend, Geneviève Lamoureux, will be in charge of translation. We currently work together for the translation of the Franky Banky et Bilodo comics I produce for the ABC quarterly newsletter mailed to members (see sample below). Genviève also translated the Franky Banky stuttering awareness buttons into French sold at the ABC annual conferences and she helped me practice my very rusty French for the keynote I gave at the 2016 ABC Annual Conference in Montreal.

Translation is target for completion in Spring 2019 (up here in the northern hemisphere) and then I’ll put everything together in a book with a target availability date of Fall 2019. This will be the first time I’ll be replacing all the text in my book, including in my comics, with another language. I can’t wait to see the final product! In the meantime, you can purchase your copy of the English version on Etsy and the digital version in the Apple Books and Google Play stores.

Can you guess what’s going on in the comic above? Unless, of course, you speak French! If not, hover over the graphic and you’ll see an explanation.